Human Events

UPDATE: Beaten Jindal Staffer Says Protesters are the Perpetrators

The mother of one of the victims of a brutal beating in New Orleans outside of a Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC) event has confirmed in a new interview that the two victims assaulted outside of the high-dollar GOP fundraiser believe their attackers were part of the crowd of protesters outside the event.

Allee Bautsch, 25, a top fundraiser for Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and her boyfriend, Joe Brown, 29, were verbally assailed as they left the event, followed to their car then savagely beaten.

Bautsch’s leg was “stomped” by her assailants causing breaks in four places that required surgery, a steel rod and seven screws to reconstruct. Brown suffered a broken jaw and nose, a brain concussion and black eye.

The assailants were described as five Caucasian males, the main assailant looking “dirty” (but not homeless), with dark red ponytail and a beard.

In her latest interview with Yahoo News (via The Hayride, h/t Pat Dollard) Berning went a bit further, saying her daughter Bautsch and her daughter’s boyfriend, Brown, believe the attackers were a group of political protesters who followed them after they left the GOP event.

And they are not alone.

Louisiana GOP Chairman Roger Villere, Jr., the host of the fundraising event that took place April 9 at Brennan’s Restaurant in the New Orleans French Quarter, said when he and his party of a half-dozen people tried to leave the event, the front door was blocked by protesters.

As reported in an interview with Villere by Lincoln Parish News Online, when Villere’s group left through the back door, they were spotted by a faction of the protesters who gave chase. Villere and his group managed to jump into a cab before the protesters in pursuit caught up with them.

Bautsch and Brown left the restaurant about an hour later.

According to Berning, Bautsch’s mother, the beaten couple was also targeted from the moment they left the restaurant.

“… things were said to my daughter and to her boyfriend that basically everything was about money,” Berning said. “From the time they were walking out of the restaurant things were being said to them.”

The couple was not robbed by the group of five assailants, only beaten.

Mick Wright at the Tennessee Conservativehas an extensive array of photographs of the actual group of protesters in his report on the nature of their signs: all about money and “the rich” and class warfare.

The main group planning the protest according to their fliers was The Iron Rail Collective, a New Orleans-based anarchist group in the vein of those who make news in America and worldwide as they trash and burn cities whenever and wherever world leaders meet.

(Other reported protesters at the SRLC event included a group of University of New Orleans “UNO” professors and local Democrat groups.)

Their signs at the GOP event protest included the capital “A” with a circle, an anarchist gang-style symbol, and such gems as, “Capitalist f***s,” “Tax the Rich,” “JINDAL, tell your rich friends to GO HOME,” and “Ruling class robbers” to name a few.

Select protesters attempted to hide their identity by tying scarves or bandanas around their heads to cover the lower half of their faces right below the eyes.

In reports that have to date ignored the type of protesters outside the event, and the violent nature of leftist, anti-government anarchist groups, the New Orleans Times-Picayune is now reporting the police investigation of the Friday, April 9, beating was not begun until the afternoon of Monday, April 12, after reports of the attack began to surface on the web.

The police report initially done the Monday after the Friday attack did not include statements from Bautsch. Police state at the time, Bautsch remained heavily medicated.